The Truth Lies Buried (Under All the Roses)
by TrueDemigodishness
Summary: A paparazzo investigates the wedding of a mysterious heiress and her strange fiancee. Set in Pete's World post-"Journey's End".


**The Truth Lies Buried (Under All the Roses)**

**Disclaimer: I don't own Doctor Who, the characters, settings, events, etc. If I did, no one would ever leave.**

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There were roses everywhere. He had insisted, apparently, Rose Tyler's fiancee; gone on about how they symbolized love and beauty "all over this planet, and quite a few others, too." (Had a tendency to go on, that one. Bit of a nutter.)

It was all a bit overdone, Felix thought as he surveyed the room before him with a critical eye. Covering every available surface with roses 'cause your fiancee's named Rose? Even the top tier of the cake had been made to look like a gathered, draping bunch of roses rather than an actual edible pastry. Everything was so sticky sweet he was beginning to feel nauseated just from the sight of it.

In fact, he had assessed the entire situation and, in his professional opinion, the whole thing was overdone and entirely too sweet to be legitimate. The perfect couple having a fairytale wedding couldn't possibly be real. Nobody was really that deeply in love or that deliriously happy all the time. He had a nose for scandals-had to, in his business, and he was one of the best-and he knew that the only things that smelled this sweet were probably rotten. Those two were hiding something-something big-and he knew it.

If he were to hazard a guess, he would say they were trying to defraud old Tyler out of his money. Mysterious girl shows up out of nowhere, claiming to be the long-lost daughter of a multi-millionaire? Oldest trick in the book. Of course, the general public was completely swayed by the tragic story of a girl kidnapped and held captive for twenty years, but the people who knew about this kind of stuff didn't believe it for a second and Felix knew about this kind of stuff. He was going to prove that those two were out for what fortune a child of Pete Tyler and her husband stood to gain, and it was going to be the scandal of the century.

To that end he had talked to Mrs. Tyler, trying to cajole her into saying something-anything-that he could use, but to no avail. It had been all, "Pete this" and "My Rose that" and "She doesn't appreciate what I do for her, never has" and talking endlessly about all the little details of the ceremony and how proud she was of "her daughter" and how happy she was that those two were finally settling down and not "runnin' all 'round the universe gettin' into trouble" and anything and everything else that crossed her mind; the woman was loud and brash and a tiny bit intimidating, but utterly useless as a source of decent information. The sum of what he had gotten from her was that she apparently wanted this to be a huge affair, but "her daughter" wanted it to be a small, private, intimate ceremony, and that the two men (her husband and the girl's fiancee) were wisely not choosing a side; that definitely did nothing to substantiate his claims. If anything, it supported the other side, the preposterous idea that all this was real, that sometimes miracles did happen and true love prevailed, and that these two were actually living a fairy-tale and not pulling a con, which he just could not believe.

Frustrated, he had next decided to go straight to the source: the mysterious Miss Tyler herself. She appeared slightly amused by him and his questions at first, smiling softly with her tongue between her teeth, as though she knew something he never would; but he continued to push and the amusement dropped, replaced by irritation and a hint of anger, causing her fiancee to appear at her side out of nowhere to intervene. This was unnecessary, however, as the petite young woman proved that she was nothing like the delicate flower for which she was named and had no need of a bodyguard. She silenced her husband-to-be with a look and a well-placed elbow, and proceeded to yell at Felix until he began to actually feel a little ashamed. Which was completely ridiculous. He had absolutely no reason to be ashamed.

He was just a journalist, just doing his job. Just because he was after a story no one else seemed to believe existed, did not make him a "sensationalist" or a "glory hound" or a "stalker." And yet the Tylers and company seemed to feel otherwise and had him banned from the property and the wedding, and took out a restraining order, and threatened to sue him. (Again, overdone.)

Which was why he had had no choice but to disguise himself as "janitorial staff" and attend this ridiculous wedding wielding a broom.

Those two cannot possibly be for real, he thought angrily as the groom gifted the bride with a bouquet of red roses and proclaimed that they symbolized true, deep, romantic, eternal love while grinning like an idiot. No one is that in love.

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**Poor Felix. So negative. probably why he didn't end up with a Rose Tyler.**

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**Thank you!**

**TrueDemigodishness**


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